Vindicating Women’s Rights in a Fetocentric State: The Longest Irish Journey

Abstract

Ailbhe Smyth’s statement above captured the anger and frustration felt by many in 1992, the year in which the Attorney General (AG) of Ireland, Harry Whelehan, obtained an injunction barring a 14-year-old girl, who had been raped by a family friend, from having an abortion in England. Her case, known as the X case, brought home how savagely Ireland’s ban on abortion could impact on a young girl and her family. This anger, particularly of women, also threatened ratification of the Maastricht Treaty when it emerged that, in 1991, the government had negotiated a secret protocol to the Treaty ensuring that European Community law could not override Article 40:3.3 of the Irish Constitution, the prohibition on abortion (Smyth, 1992: 17-21). In effect, it denied Irish women future rights under European law enjoyed by women in other states. Thousands demonstrated in the streets to support the girl and her family and protest against a regime in which those seeking abortions, and anyone helping them, were criminalized (Bacik, 2004: 117). Smyth accurately summed up events in 1992 as a “tragic farce” played out in a male-controlled society, where the “foetocentric rhetoric and ethics” of the dominant Catholic Church dictated policy on reproduction (Smyth, 1992: 22). An appeal to the Supreme Court, however, resulted in the landmark decision that Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion did not apply if “it is established as a matter of probability that there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health” of a woman including (as the girl was by then suicidal) the risk of suicide.

But while the farce-makers act out their sadistic joke on the public stage, women in Ireland considering or seeking abortions abroad continue to do so in private anguish, uncertain about the legal status of their actions and without the information and practical support which would help to make their journey less traumatic.

—Smyth, 1992: 10